Halo Wars – Reviewed

It’s quiet…

Ahem…

Two words.  Halo Wars.  OMGWTFSPNKrBBQ!

I am in love with this game!  Okay, I’m a Halo fanboy.  Here is a more realistic review.

Amid much hype, Microsoft and the former Ensemble Studios brings us Halo Wars.  A new RTS (Real Time Strategy) game for the Xbox 360 based in the Halo universe.

Visual Style

Cinematics: Here is my first gripe.  Don’t get me wrong, the game looks great!  However, the Elites are not quite right.  They move more like some big ape then the aliens we first met many years ago on that ring world.  Other than that, the computer animation is fantastic!  Very top notch.  Captain Cutter looks great, his clothes move, his face looks good.  Professor Anders face is a bit stiff, but otherwise just fine.  Sergeant Forge looks great too.  Basically everything but the Elites looks great.  9/10

In Game Graphics: Wow, everything is spot on.  The colors, the grass, the buildings, all looks great!  Awesome animations for all the units too.  I found nothing wrong.  10/10

Sound

Music: Recognizably Halo.  I definitely felt a connection to the original Halo series.  I also heard new stuff that tied in very well.  It served the purpose of keeping me in the game.  10/10

Voice Work: Nice!  The UNSC characters all seemed fine, the voices matched their personality and looks quite well.  The Elites however, sounded more “Brute-ish” than like the Elites we are used to.  8/10

Sound Effects: Spot on!  Wraiths sounded like Wraiths, Warthogs sound like Warthogs, Shotguns sound like Shotguns, and OMG Spartan Shields sound perfect!  (Sorry, a little fanboyish there).  10/10

Gameplay

RTS on a console, not an easy task.  Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 tried to pull it off, but it felt clunky.  Ensemble (sorry to see you guys go) nailed it.  I have only one complaint, no hotkeys to assign groups to.  But with the limited controls I couldn’t immediately see how it could be done.  Then I watched the vidocs.  There was the answer, the circle menu.  Rather than have (X) for attack/move I would have used (A).  Press (A) to select, move your cursor to where you want them to go and press (A) a second time.  Assign (X) to groups.  Select units with (A) then press (X) to open the circle menu, select your slot with left stick, then press (A) to save it.  When you want to call them up, press (X), select which “Squad” and press (A).  You could then have up to 8 groups.

Controls: As for the rest of the gameplay, the only other complaint would be that I couldn’t zoom in further in skirmish, but I can live without that.  Unit selection seemed fine though some people complained about “All Units” and “Local Units”.  Once I got used to the two options, I found them quick and intuitive.  Simply move your screen so only the units you want are on the screen then select them with “Local Units”.  Once you have them selected, use your right trigger to cycle through the different types if you need to.  9/10

Mission Variety: Another thing I really liked was the variety of missions.  It wasn’t your typical build a base, destroy their base over and over again.  I don’t want to spoil it, so let’s just say it reminded me of Call of Duty 4 in this regard. 10/10

Multiplayer

Maps: Here the game is a little weak.  There is not a very good selection of maps to play on.  Don’t get me wrong, there are enough, but I would have liked to see some more variety.  However with a game of this type, I would expect to see more with DLC.  8/10

Experience: Co-op campaign adds a great touch to the game allowing more advanced strategies at the higher difficulty levels.  In addition I like the ability to have 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 games!  It allows for a wide variety of strategies and tactics.  I also really enjoy the team aspects of the larger games, for me team games are the salt & pepper of online multiplayer over Xbox Live. 10/10

Replayability

Very replayable, the added “black boxes” and skulls, unlockable timeline, and mission scoring will keep me playing the campaign for quite some time.  Add to that the versatile online multiplayer including co-op and the skirmish modes and it won’t grow old quick.  10/10

Overall Feel

Awesome!  This game is a must have for any Halo fan.  It is also a great introduction to the larger world of RTS games.  Some people have said that it won’t satisfy the hard-core RTS fans, but I disagree.  If you look at it as a console game first, RTS second, you realize that it wasn’t designed the same as PC RTS games.  It’s a different breed of game (no pun intended).  Lest I forget, go check out the Prima Guide for this game too!  It has oodles of great information and hints for someone new to this genre or just a fan of the series.

Total Score: 94/100!

Free Xbox Live Arcade Game Coming Soon!

Apparently there have been issues with Xbox Live lately.  I haven’t noticed, I’ve been playing too much Mass Effect.

Anyhow, Microsoft says we can have a free game for our troubles.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Xbox LIVE Members:

During this past holiday season you helped us break a number of Xbox LIVE records.  This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke the record for the single biggest day of concurrent members ever on the service. 

As a result of this massive increase in usage we know that some of you experienced intermittent Xbox LIVE issues over the holiday break.  While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance.  I would like to take this moment to thank each and every one of you for your patience and understanding as our team has worked around the clock to return the service to a stable state. 

At the same time we would like to offer a token of our appreciation to all of you in celebration of record success for the service.  And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge.  In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you. 

Thank you again for helping make Xbox LIVE everything that it is today! 

Sincerely,

Marc Whitten
General Manager, Xbox LIVE
Gamertag: Notwen

Originally posted here.

Mass Effect and ResilientMonkey

Okay, been a while since I’ve written.  However, I’m back and I’ve got something to say!  Recently I’ve been playing Mass Effect, a frikkin’ awesome game the compares right up there with Halo!

Playing this game has led me to thinking about video games.  Most specifically Xbox games though I’m sure it ties in to other games as well.

My Thoughts:

• Number of weapons – Okay, Halo broke the mold with only 2 weapons and 2 grenade types to choose from.  Mass Effect gives you 4 weapons, a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, and a sniper rifle to choose from along with a single grenade.  Further you can modify your weapon/grenade types on the fly.  Props to Mass Effect as they realistically show the weapons stowed on your backpack or hip holster.  I would do it a little differently.  I like the Mass Effect 4 weapons and a grenade.  However, I would lock the weapon modification until you were back on your ship/base.  I think that would present some nice realism while giving you the ability to have a few weapon choices.
• Combat – Halo has this one hands down.  I would prefer the ability to toggle between 1st and 3rd person combat.  This way people who enjoy 1st person can fight their way, and people who enjoy 3rd person can fight their way.  Simple.
• Jump – Every game should have a jump button.  No, you don’t need to jump as high as the Master Chief, but you should be able to jump up a little and grab ledges etc.  This was played out nicely in the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay Xbox game.
• Melee – Halo again has this one hands down.  Put in a nice melee punch for up close enemies.
• Stance – Here I will defer to Far Cry.  You should be able to toggle between standing up, crouching, and lying prone.
• Choices – Mass Effect wins this one, Halo a close second.  I really enjoy having choices that effect the outcome of the game!  Instead of one path leading you through a set of staged battles.  Be a little more open, give some options.  Same with the cutscenes, the additional choices in Mass Effects cutscenes were awesome!
• AI – Well, there are issues with all AI’s I guess.  Hardware and software limitations most likely.  But anyways, much can be learned from the bad guys in Halo 3.  Very nice work.
• Zoom – The scope in Halo 3 works awesome!  Probably a little too awesome.  I like the one in Far Cry better, seems more realistic with a little swaying when you breathe and the ability to hold your breath to fire.
• Weapon Types – Okay, how about some realistic future weapons.  Hello, 4 shots with the sniper rifle in Halo?  WTF?  Modern ones have a 10 shot clip, and are semi-automatic.  Get with the program!  Far Cry I felt was more realistic, but the weapons were supposed to be modern.  Mass Effect, great idea with the no-ammo thing, but it seemed a little far fetched.  Maybe put in large clips, like say 100 rounds.  I think that would have been a bit more realistic.
• Story – Mass Effect wins!  Halo a close second.  Games like Crackdown could use some plots like those!
• Open World Exploration – Wow, after playing a game like Crackdown, I finally see what kind of neat stuff can be done with open world exploration.  I’m not saying make the whole game like that (though you could), but at least a few levels where we can do some OWE would be awesome!
• Sex – Okay, I have to put this one in as it’s in Mass Effect.  You can choose between a male or female character.  The male character can have a relationship with a female character or a female-like alien character.  The female character can have a relationship with a male character or the female-like alien character.  WTF?  You should be able to choose a sexual orientation when you create your character.  That way, if it’s your preference, you can have your male character have a relationship with the other male character.  Seems pretty one-sided to me.
• Character Design – Mass Effect has a pretty neat idea, but they need to go a little further.  Some better face choices and hair choices would have been nice.  Along with being able to choose your body type.  You can make a gruff-looking male character but he gets stuck with a rather spindly body.
• Weapon Upgrades – This is mainly toward Mass Effect.  While I enjoy the upgrade idea, I think it was poorly done.  Instead of having to go buy/find new upgrades and placing them on your gun, just throw money at it!  Say a certain amount to add features.  Does away with the whole, spend money, but stuff, put it on gun, then spend more money to buy more stuff to put on gun and sell the original stuff.  Just pay money, gun gets better.

Well, I guess that’s my ideas in a nutshell.  Maybe someday, some game company will listen.

Top 100 Games 2007!

IGN has released their Top 100 Games for 2007!  Go read!

Link to  article

Halo came in #32!

Where to go with this Blog

Okay, I’ve started another blog, Tales of the Average Guy.  That one is about my life in general, not just my addiction to video games.  I don’t know where to go with this blog… or even if I’ll keep writing in it.  I guess we will find out!

Better get a post up!

Well, I was working on my other blog mostly. Sorry about that folks! I did run to GameStop at the Oakdale Mall today and took back some old Xbox games that I’m not gonna play any more:

• Driv3r – Just didn’t enjoy it.
• Spy Hunter 3 – Just plain sucked.
• Need for Speed Underground 1 & 2 – Didn’t really enjoy them.
• Half-Life 2 – Love the game, but now I have a copy on my Xbox 360, The Orange Box.

I got almost $20 for them because of a huge sale this week I decided to pick up Star Wars Battlefront as I heard it was pretty good. Got it for $7.10! Woohoo! I’ll probably set the rest aside (they gave me an in store credit) to pick up a decent used Xbox 360 game.

I also have been organizing my Xbox games on a neat shelf rack I picked up from Wal-Mart. While going through them, I’m putting a Post-It on the ones that will play in my 360. I’ll stop by Staples or someplace to get little red dots to use permanently. I’ll put them right on the binding so it’s easy to see which ones will work.

I must say that the games that are 480p and up look pretty good on the 360 hooked to my Dell 19″ Flat Screen Monitor! I played the first level on Halo and Halo 2, just for fun! I also tried out Fable, not a bad game… I think I’ll play that one through just to see what happens.

Xbox Christmas Ideas!

Here is a list of kewl Xbox stuff you can buy for yourself get for someone you care about for Christmas!

1. Xbox 360 – They come in a few flavors:
   1. Arcade Console – $279.99 – Great for a casual gamer! No hard drive but it does have a memory card, 1 controller, and 5 Xbox Live Arcade Games (Pac-Man, UNO, Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket, and Feeding Frenzy).
   2. Premium Console – $349.99 – This one comes with a 20GB hard drive! Also included are 1 controller, a headset, and 2 games (Forza Motorsport 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance).
   3. Halo 3 Special Edition – $399.99 – Same as the Premium console, but Halo themed! 1 controller, a headset, a play-n-charge kit, but no games. Contains the same hardware as the Elite, but the smaller hard drive. Must-have for any Halo 3 fans!
   4. The Elite – $449.99 – Again, same as the Premium console, but BLACK! 1 controller (black), a headset (black), triple core processor, and 2 games (Forza Motorsport and Marvel Ultimate Alliance). The top of the line, best of the best!
2. Wireless Networking Adapter – $99.99 – Less wires! Only get if you have a wireless router in your house or apartment!
3. Quick Charge Kit – $29.99 – Comes with a charger and 1 rechargeable battery. Great for charging batteries for your controllers, no wire to get in the way!
4. HD DVD Player – $179.99 – Allows you to watch HD DVD movies on your HD TV through your Xbox 360! Need I say more?
5. Spare Controller (Pink or Blue) – $49.99 – Also available in standard White or Elite Black.
6. Messenger Kit – $29.99 – Comes with a kewl little keyboard for your controller, allowing you to type! Very handy for Halo 3, Viva Pinata, or any game that has the ability to name things. Can also chat on MSN messenger with it! Comes with headset too.
7. Universal Remote – $19.99 – Allows you to control your TV and your Xbox 360 with one remote. Great for watching movies with! Can also be used to control media sharing between your PC and your Xbox 360.
8. Halo 3 Wireless Headset – $59.99 – Halo 3 color matched to the Halo 3 Xbox! Bluetooth technology frees up any wires! Also available in plain White.
9. VGA HD Cable – $39.99 – Hooks your Xbox 360 up to almost any monitor! True HD performance! Works best on CRT monitors.
10. 120GB Hard Drive – $179.99 – Give a huge 500% increase in storage! Need I say more?
11. Halo 3 Carrying Case – $49.99 – Kewl black sling-back backpack with a Halo 3 logo stitched on it. Great for making your Xbox 360 portable!
12. Gameface 360 – $14.99 – Make your own custom faceplates for your 360!

All prices are from Circuit City as of 11/27/2007. Go enjoy your 360!

The Bungie Store

For all of you that don’t know, here’s a great spot to find kewl Halo 3 merchandise!

The Bungie Store 

Halo 3 Campaign Scoring Contest Winner!

Okay, this is a bit late, sorry folks!  Anyways, recently I did a small article on a campaign scoring contest for Halo 3.  My submission didn’t win   However, a guy that goes by Ezandora did!  With an amazing 347,620 points!  Wow this guy is great!  If you’re a fellow Halo 3 lover, go ahead and download his film, it’s in his share file.  If you don’t have Halo 3 the film is hosted here as well.

He wrote this up for us losers so we may learn to be as great as him!

The Basics
SketchFactor posted an amazingly complete explanation of how the metagame’s mechanics work. Go read it!

The essential thing to get out of that guide is this: the most important thing behind any run is the point multiplier. The four ways to increase it are enabling skulls, changing the difficulty level, finishing the level quickly enough to earn a time bonus, and finishing enemies with style moves.

The time bonus is amazing in its utility, simply because the way its applied: instead of adding to the regular multiplier, as skulls do, it multiplies it. This means one skull can, if you complete the level quickly enough, be worth three skulls worth at the end. This is an enormous gain, and is responsible for over half my score. For this reason, it’s important to complete the level quickly. This, however, does not mean run through the level as fast as you can – it’s better to balance things out. In short, you might be able to achieve a 3x multiplier if you skip half the encounters, but those encounters could give you much more points, overall, if you stuck around and targeted a 2.5x bonus.

For skulls, I would recommend turning on as many as you’re comfortable with, minus Iron, which we’ll save for later. For me, this was every skull minus Black Eye and Mythic. Black Eye is tricky on levels with lots of vehicle combat – there’s simply no easy way to regain your shields. As for the Mythic skull, I’ve found it to drag encounters on for not nearly as much of a bonus. In the time it takes to destroy one enemy with Mythic on, I can kill three without. You can mitigate this by using instant-kill techniques – a sticky grenade, or a headshot, or running them over, or whatever else you can think of, but that won’t always be an available option. I’ve heard of a run that uses the skull to great success, though – as always, your experience may vary. Also turn on the grunt birthday party skull. I cannot stress how important that skull is to your general well being and overall score.

For the difficulty level, I chose Normal. Normal is a good baseline to start from – you don’t get any extra points for using it, but it’s not too hard, and it’s possible to do things on it that you cannot on other levels. For example, in The Covenant, there’s only one laser on Heroic but two on Normal, which opens up all sorts of possibilities. Normal also means the enemies fire less often, which means you can play around with your movement a lot more without fear of dying.

The style kills are covered in SketchFactor’s guide. Try to make them happen as often as possible; not only do they give extra points, but they’re always efficient ways to dispatch enemies.

All of this can be boiled down to: turn on lots of skulls, run fast, play on Normal, and do it with style.

She needs a trial run
So, with all of that in mind, what do we do next? We plan. The first thing you should do is play through the level in the metagame, with all the skulls and such. However, don’t worry about the time bonus in the slightest. Instead, you should take a look around, and think about every encounter, and apply four thought processes to them:

-What can I do to maximize the points gained in this encounter? (target choice)
-What can I do to get through this encounter as quickly as possible? (weapon choice)
-What equipment from a previous encounter would help me out here?
-(if you’re going to use the Iron skull) How can I avoid dying in this encounter? (path choice, target choice)

For points, we simply focus on the biggest targets. Destroying one high-value enemy can be worth destroying ten of another; therefore, they should be the main focus. Don’t sweat the small stuff; a drone here or there isn’t going to affect your overall score. Skip a platoon if they look too scary. A short list of big targets, in order of priority:

-Vehicles. They always give ridiculous amounts of points, but only if you destroy them with a passenger inside. That means if you kill the passenger first, you won’t get the points, so watch out. These are easily and quickly dispatched with lasers, tanks, rocket launchers, missile pods, and hornets. It’s even possible to run directly into a vehicle with a warthog and make it explode; I’ve done this with turrets and ghosts, although the second is quite tricky, as they have to be accelerating directly towards you. But always remember: target the body, not the passenger.

-Chieftains. These can be tricky to kill, since they have so much health; for this reason I try to save power weapons for them. Remember that the needler won’t work very well against them, and you can’t stick them with grenades. Field investigator Goatrope reports that using a charged plasma pistol shot and a few battle rifle headshots to take them out works well, and it also nets two separate style multipliers.

-Hunters, if you can manage it. I haven’t been able to work out a way to kill them that’s ammunition efficient though.

-Brutes. They’re quick to kill if you do it right. My favorite way is to wait for one to throw a grenade at me, then stick one on them. Since they’re throwing a grenade, they won’t be able to dodge yours, and they’ll also drop more grenades to use on their friends. You can clear out entire platoons this way if you’re careful.

-Big groups just asking for grenades. Even just a blind throw while you’re rushing past can help.

-Large packs of grunts. If you’re handy with a battle rifle, you can headshot the entire pack within seconds.

For speed, we try to take out our chosen targets as fast as we can, while moving towards our goal. Try to get out into the fray as much as possible – have confidence! Skip past stuff that doesn’t help your score much. Run past entire groups of enemies if you don’t have the time, or if you’re likely to die – it turns out, this works more often than not.

Equipment choice is a tricky one. The basic idea is that if you save a piece of equipment, you can make a later encounter much easier than it usually is. As an example, I kept a laser gun around until the top of the first tower, simply because it could dispatch the Chieftain in one shot. However, you have to figure out where and when this should be applicable. A good rule of thumb is to save the power weapons (the laser, the rocket launcher, etc.) and items (invincibility, cloaking) for the hard-to-fight areas and enemies.

Finally, you should consider how to avoid dying, especially if you’re going to try finalizing the run with Iron. The basic idea is to identify where and how you’re dying, and think up how to avoid it. Trying the same area with the same tactics, over and over, can work, but you’ll have a better chance if you stop, think a bit, and change your plan. For me, this ended up either targeting the things what kill me first, running past the entire encounter because it is scary and is like death, or using a different path through the area that gives better cover.
Some things to watch out for:
-Grunts with grenades. If you’re in an enclosed area, those blue explosions can be very deadly, very quickly. Avoid, or take out the grunts as quickly as possible.
-Hunters. They shoot you and it hurts. They smash you and it hurts more.
-Being surrounded. It’s hard to deal with being shot in the back when you’re busy shooting to the front. Try a different path.

Once you’ve considered all of these things, you can do the run again, except this time trying to target the time bonus. Pace yourself by allocating out time for each rough section of the level – for example, say you’re going to be at the seven minute mark after you’re done with the first tower. Gradually decrease your time targets for each area until you’ve reached your desired time bonus. This should keep you moving quickly enough while not being too stressed out about moving as fast as possible. It also lets you think, hmm, I’m taking up too much time in this area, maybe I should try it another way.

Random tricks:
-I discovered that the gravity hammer can be a good drone-zapper if you jump inside the swarm and mash the fire button. Its effect around you makes them drop like flies.
-You can wear out the dialogue if you play through the level too much – remember that you can disable dialogue by playing a repeating song playlist in the Xbox Dashboard. You’ll miss out on the music, which makes Marty very sad, but it’s okay, he can deal with it I think.

Finishing Touches
So you’ve done a run that you’re pretty confident in. You’ve seen every battle, you’ve beaten down every enemy with expert precision. What next?

Try doing it again, without dying. The Iron skull, which removes checkpoints from the game, provides a 3x bonus. It is ever so useful for that, but it makes even the slightest slip-up mean total death. For this reason, Iron skull runs can be extremely tedious, so watch out. Fortunately, the feeling of victory you get after winning the level without a single death is quite euphoric, which makes up for the tedium. Also afterwards you can tell your friends about how cool you are for doing that and they will think you are cool which is a pretty good thing to have in life.

That’s about it. Just remember: don’t get aggravated if it gets too difficult. Go outside and take in the scenery, then try again.

There you have it folks!  The highest score and how to do it!  Go play!

And now for something completely different!

I have decided to return to the roots of this Blog, it is after all ResilientMonkey’s Adventures in Halo.  I am going to limit it to such things as my adventures in gaming.  Mostly concentrated around Halo, but allowing myself to stray to gaming in general.

Halo is the reason I got back into gaming.  That one fateful day I’ll never forget.  Well, I may forget the date as I have issues with such trivial things as dates   Anyways, back to my story… I was at my girlfriend Heather’s house with not much to do.  She was otherwise occupied and I was left to sit on the couch watching her brother James play through some “Halo Demo” on his Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee game disc.  He grew tired of it before too long and ended up shutting it down and leaving for somewhere.

I fired up the old dilapidated Xbox and popped in the disc.  I played through that level and fell in love with gaming again!  This was the kind of game that I always wished they could make!

After arriving home, I researched and looked and eventually found a copy of Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC.  I bought it and played it through, with horrible graphics.  Not due to the game, but to my poor PC whose video card was unable to handle the graphics.  After saving and selling, I managed to come up with the needed $100 to upgrade my video card.  The game was fantastic, I never saw such detail and realism before (the last game I fell in love with was GoldenEye on the N64).

Soon, I learned of Halo 2 being released only for the Xbox.  I knew I had to get one.  NOW.  I went and purchased my brand new Xbox for $150.  That date I remember well, November 9th, 2004.  It was the same day that I went to K-Mart and purchased Halo 2.  I fell in love again!

The story was deep and amazing (review coming up), the gameplay fantastic, and the graphics beyond any I had ever seen before.  I was hooked.  While living in Maryland for a while, I decided that my lovely Xbox needed to be used for other things besides Halo.  I began a search for other great games, games that made me glad to be a gamer.  I ended up with a little over 50 games in all.  There are still a few I wish to get to finish out my collection.

This love affair again lead to another fateful day.  Tuesday September 25, 2007.  After work, I drove to Vestal to the Circuit City and picked up my Halo 3 copy with kewl 4′ wall graphic (still in the box).  The Sunday before, I had driven out to Circuit City to purchase the very Item I had saved for for well over a year, the Halo 3 Xbox 360.  My friend Travis and I played through the first level with my friend Brahmen.  The next 2 days, Travis and I played through to finish the fight!

Again I was in love!  Better graphics, more awesome storytelling, and great wondrous new things!  Unfortunately now, I am unemployed, so my ability to purchase games is limited (as in no games for me).  I did manage to pick up a few though, as I wanted to share the Xbox 360 with my lovely daughters.

I did manage to receive a wondrous present from my Parents though.  On my birthday, my parents bought a subscription to XNA for me.  XNA for those of you who don’t know, is the system with which you can create Xbox 360 games on your PC!  They can be transferred over and played just like Xbox Live Arcade games.  I have not yet had a chance to create anything, but I have a small list of old-school games I would like to play again, and this is the perfect way to do that!